Government – Page 8 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Category: Government

Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – Ninth & Tenth Amendments

Posted on November 27, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Let’s separate …

… let’s take all the assets-powers-responsibilities and divvy them up between the one party and the other. (Sounds like a Country-Western Break-up song, right? See sample in the Appendix VIDEO below). But, in this case, let’s do this separation, not so that we can go our separate ways, but rather let’s do this separation so that we can come together:

You bring the brawn, I bring the brains … let’s make lots of money
You bring the bread, I bring the meat … let’s make a sandwich
You bring the seafood, I bring the okra … let’s make a gumbo

This is the reality of a confederation or a confederacy. According to the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean (Page 63), which serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), this confederation tactic is the best hope to reform-and-transform the failing Caribbean to finally have a hope for prosperity:

A federation, by definition is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-autonomous states or regions united by a central (federal) government. In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of powers between them and the central government, are typically constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision of the states. For the Caribbean, the branding is a Trade Federation, thereby highlighting the limited scope of the entity’s governance. Its prime directive is to enable the economic engines of the region, and thereafter protect their security interests.

The Caribbean Union Trade Federation will be coextensive with the member-states of the CU. This indicates that the governmental units of the state governments will share the same boundaries of the Trade Federation. Jurisdiction of the two entities will therefore co-exist for the governance of the region. The tactical plan is to specify a separation-of-powers between the entity of the technocratic CU versus the governmental entities of the member-states (and their municipal authorities).

Our best example of a confederacy – and the Separation of Power – in antiquity was the nascent United States of America (1776 – 1789). The best example of confederacy in modern times is the European Union. These entities did exactly what this commentary is advocating:

Separate the assets-powers-responsibilities so that the different parties perform different duties to execute the governing demands of the implied Social Contract … with the consent of the governed.

(Implied Social Contract = citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights).

As related, we publish a series of teaching commentaries every month – as a supplement to the Go Lean book. This month, we are examining the thesis that we, in the Caribbean, can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. The issue of confederation is a valid consideration in this month’s teaching subject on the perceived ‘masterpiece’ of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights – the first 10 Amendments that were proposed-ratified right at the start of the accession of the new Constitutional Republic (1791). In earlier commentaries of this series, we detailed the anti-tyranny provisions and criminal proceedings of the Bill of Rights; now we look at the Separation of Powers provisions, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the US Constitution. These provide the legal premise as follows:

Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other [rights] retained by the people.^[93]

The Ninth Amendment declares that there are additional fundamental rights that exist outside the Constitution. The rights enumerated in the Constitution are not an explicit and exhaustive list of individual rights. It was rarely mentioned in Supreme Court decisions before the second half of the 20th century, when it was cited by several of the justices in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). The Court in that case voided a statute prohibiting use of contraceptives as an infringement of the right of marital privacy.^[116] This right was, in turn, the foundation upon which the Supreme Court built decisions in several landmark cases, including, Roe v. Wade (1973), which overturned a Texas law making it a crime to assist a woman to get an abortion, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which invalidated a Pennsylvania law that required spousal awareness prior to obtaining an abortion.

Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.^[93]

The Tenth Amendment reinforces the principles of separation of powers and federalism by providing that powers not granted to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved to the states or the people. The amendment provides no new powers or rights to the states, but rather preserves their authority in all matters not specifically granted to the federal government.^[117]

Congress has sometimes circumvented the Tenth Amendment by invoking the Commerce Clause in Article One^[118] or by threatening to withhold funding for a federal program from non-cooperative States, as in South Dakota v. Dole (1987).
Source: Retrieved November 26, 2019 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

The historicity of the US shows that they did not always appreciate the concept of Separation of Powers. Though the Bill of Rights was fully ratified in 1791, these provisions had no bearing on the States, until starting around the 1860’s with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yes, for at least 70 years – and even longer in some cases – the country had a divergent sets of constitutional rights: some at the federal level and totally different ones at the State level. See this point as pronounced here from the same encyclopedic reference as above:

Although Madison’s [- the original author -] proposed amendments included a provision to extend the protection of some of the Bill of Rights to the states, the amendments that were finally submitted for ratification applied only to the federal government. The door for their application upon state governments was opened in the 1860s, following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the early 20th century both federal and state courts have used the Fourteenth Amendment to apply portions of the Bill of Rights to state and local governments. The process is known as incorporation.^[3]

So there you have it; the masterpiece of a legal framework that was the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights was not so perfect a masterpiece after all. However, the beauty of the US Constitution History is not its start; it’s the journey, and the finish.

This is where and how the Caribbean can forge a better legal legacy – we can make our own masterpiece now at the start of our federal government, and not have to endure the same long train of abuses to get to this destination. We can do better in our Caribbean homeland; this is the quest of the Go Lean movement to reform and transform Caribbean society. The revelation of an ugly history for the Bill of Rights is the purpose of this November 2019 blog series. The full catalog of this series on the Bill of Rights is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment – We can do better
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment – No slavery legacy
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments – Remember, Justice First
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

As this series refers to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states, this entry focuses more on the need for a Separation of Powers provisions. We do not need jurisdictional confusion between federal authorities and those of the member-states; they need to separate, yes, so as to come together for an integrated solution. See how this is presented visually in this photo here – a facsimile of Page 71 of the Go Lean book:

(Click on photo to Enlarge)

In this photo, notice all the “Exclusive = Yes” federal departments. This means, according to the verbiage in the book, as related in 1 example regarding the separated-exclusive Depository Insurance & Regulatory Authority:

The scope and jurisdiction of this Agency is exclusive in the region for Caribbean dollar activity.

This structure is repeated, again and again in the book; of the 51 identified federal agencies, 28 are chartered as exclusive authority or jurisdiction. This is good for regional governance; this means local member-states do NOT have to maintain duplicate agencies to do the same functions that can be technocratically delivered at the federal level. Consider these further examples – again, not the exhaustive list:

Securities Exchange Regulatory Authority	Coast Guard / Naval Authority
Witness Protection (WitSec)	Trade / Anti-Trust Regulatory Commission
Patents, Standards and Copyrights Authority	Postal Services
Communications & Media Authority	Aviation Administration & Promotions
Student Loan Funding	Medical Licenses & Standards

This foregoing information is from 1 page of the Go Lean book, while in fact there are 370 pages of turn-by-turn directions on how to reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines for the Caribbean region and their member-states. This roadmap includes the new community ethos (attitudes and values) that must be adopted; plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to deliver the obligations of the Social Contract. In fact, this is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 222, entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, and thus creates an economic zone of over $800 Billion (c. 2010). The sheer size of this single economy allows for more government efficiencies and effectiveness, as should be expected by citizens of a modern democracy. This expectation is pegged to the implied Social Contract where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. The CU ascension creates another layer of government hierarchy for the region, but the implication is the same: there is a Social Contract of deliverables and responsibilities that the CU must execute, in the sphere of economic empowerment and homeland security.
2	Economics of Colonies … The CU Social Contract calls for a re-boot in which this region will not just consume, but also create/produce.
3	Non-Profitable Endeavors [18th Century] economist Adam Smith, recommended further that governments not impede the wheels of commerce, (laissez-faire), rather concentrate more on endeavors not financially feasible for private enterprises, like early childhood education, standing armies, public safety, etc. … The CU proposes public-domain services that can expand the economics (income/jobs) for the region, such as the prison industrial complex, student loans for tertiary education and licenses for private security/1^st response services.
4	Security of Colonies History has shown that there must be security solutions or “bad actors” will exploit successful economic engines for illicit gains. This was the case with the Pirates of the Caribbean plundering the booty of Spanish treasure-laden ships, and also the Outlaws of the Old West robbing the yields of prospectors from the Gold Rushes (i.e. California, Alaska). The CU assuages regional terroristic threats and prosecutes economic crimes.
5	Infrastructure Roads, bridges, sewer systems, and other infrastructure projects cannot always function as profit centers, many times these endeavors must be invested in for the sake of the greater good, without the rationale of profit. This expectation is economically unrealistic for smaller states, but with the scale of the entire CU, viable solutions can be put in place.
6	Medical / Heath Endeavors
7	Education Optimizations
8	Failed State Indices Movements
9	Technology and Efficiency The CU will foster the art and science of technology deployments. This includes the embrace of advanced project management and lean organizational initiatives (Six Sigma, Agile, PMI, CMM, etc.), resulting in efficient deliveries.
10	Canadian Provincial Governments Model

The reasons for Caribbean Push and Pull are tied to deficiencies in the economic and security engines; think jobs or crime. But governance is important too. The Go Lean roadmap posits that the deployment of optimized administrative systems will help Caribbean governments to govern better … and at a lower cost.

This theme – improving governing mechanics and systems – has been related in many previous Go Lean commentaries. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18524	e-Money Solutions for the Caribbean Dollar – Now One Step Closer
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17925	Learning from Previous Failures for Infrastructure Developments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17500	Continuity of Business: Learning from System Failures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17282	Way Forward – For Independence: Territory Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16848	‘Two Pies’ for a New Caribbean – Federal vs Member-State
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15858	A Regional Network – A Mandate for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15075	e-Government 3.0 – Systems for Improved Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13999	First Steps – Deputize the CU for Regional Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13524	Future Focused – e-Government Portal 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10771	Logical Addresses – ‘Life or Death’ Consequences
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6965	Secrecy, corruption and conflicts of interest pervade state governments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1112	The problem with Bad Governance is not Money; its Bad Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=888	Better Governance – Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent

Yes, we can be Better Than America; but it is not easy; it involves some heavy-lifting that many times America itself did not want to do. Just think, all the reasonable accommodations they subsequently made to “live and let live”. We take it for granted today, but for previous generations, this was a “tall order”. This is how we can be better … now, by fully embracing the mandate for a pluralistic democracy, now.

Imagine: Civil Rights without a Civil War; Gender Equity without a Battle of the Sexes.

This is how we can do better than America’s Bill of Rights. We can just give people their rights, with no tyranny attached. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the ccidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————

Appendix VIDEO – Collin Raye – Make Sure You’ve Got It All (1998) – https://youtu.be/SDsOHyMZr5U

Published on Nov 7, 2011 – From the Collin Raye album ‘The Walls Came Down’. Written by Bill Anderson and Steve Wariner. No copyright infringement is intended.

Category: Music
Song: Make Sure You’ve Got It All
Artist: Collin Raye
Album: The Walls Came Down
Licensed to YouTube by: SME (on behalf of Epic/Nashville); Sony ATV Publishing, CMRRA, BMI – Broadcast Music Inc., SOLAR Music Rights Management, WAMA, Inc., UMPG Publishing, and 2 Music Rights Societies

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CariCom, History, Model, Power

Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – Seventh & Eighth Amendments

Posted on November 26, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

We presented a thesis, that despite the public branding of America being the “Greatest” country, we can do better in a new Caribbean. We presented the argument that the American Bill of Rights may not be the masterpiece as people want to believe:

It’s First Amendment does not allow for mitigation of the Fake News phenomenon;
the Second Amendment does not allow for common sense gun control;
the Fourth & Fifth Amendments allows for so many exclusions that they undermine any quest for justice.

Now we make the assessments on the Seventh and Eighth Amendments of the US Constitution. These provide the legal premise of …

Seventh Amendment – Guarantees jury trials in federal civil cases
Eighth Amendment – Restricts against excessive bail and cruel-and-unusual punishments

Surely, these constitutional provisions allow the United States to be a more Perfect Union? Undeniably, No! In fact, these constitutional mandates have resulted in a more unequaled society. As we examine the actuality of America’s criminal justice system, we concur with the critics and scholars, that the legal deficiencies are acute; see these headlines here:

“Increasingly, bail has become a way to lock up the poor regardless to guilt” – VIDEO below.

“War against Poor people” – Criticism of America in previous VIDEO.

These headlines are true because of the painful reality that there are two standards of justice in America:

One for poor people and one for rich people. – See the previous blog-commentaries in Appendix A below.

What is worse: there’s nothing “we” can do about it, as Caribbean people. There is little that American can do about it either. This is the continuation – 5 of 6 – of the November 2019 series from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. This series supports the thesis that we, in the Caribbean, can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. As related in a previous submission, the American Bill of Rights was designed to be embedded in the country’s legal foundation in such a way so as to prevent subsequent majorities from violating the rights of minorities. This sounds “good on paper”, but it made it near-impossible to change the Constitution. So when deficiencies emerge just through societal evolution, the country’s criminal justice laws have not kept pace; now there is a blatantly unequal, unjust system of law-and-order.

This introduction allows us to define these subsets of the Bill of Rights, the Seventh and Eighth Amendments of the US Constitution, as follows:

Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.^[93]

The Seventh Amendment guarantees jury trials in federal civil cases that deal with claims of more than twenty dollars. It also prohibits judges from overruling findings of fact by juries in federal civil trials.

Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.^[93]

The Eighth Amendment forbids the imposition of excessive bails or fines, though it leaves the term “excessive” open to interpretation.^[112] The most frequently litigated clause of the amendment is the last, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.^[113][114] This clause was only occasionally applied by the Supreme Court prior to the 1970s, generally in cases dealing with means of execution. In Furman v. Georgia (1972), some members of the Court found capital punishment itself in violation of the amendment, arguing that the clause could reflect “evolving standards of decency” as public opinion changed; others found certain practices in capital trials to be unacceptably arbitrary, resulting in a majority decision that effectively halted executions in the United States for several years.^[115] Executions resumed following Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which found capital punishment to be constitutional if the jury was directed by concrete sentencing guidelines.^[115] The Court has also found that some poor prison conditions constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as in Estelle v. Gamble (1976) and Brown v. Plata (2011).^[113]
Source: Retrieved November 26, 2019 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Note: Rich people are able to hire jury consultants to “stack the deck” in their favor to ensure victory. It’s an art and a science! (See more on this subject here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_consulting).

The US currently boast a criminal justice system with Cash Bail that imperils the poor. So when a suspect is accused of a crime and does not have the money for bail, they have to stay in jail until their trial. Since they are detained, this actuality is in fact a “cruel and unusual” punishment; especially when they have been innocent all the while. Many times the offences are small and the amount of time away from their normal routines (jobs and family obligations) disrupt their lives severely. See how this has been depicted in this embedded VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Bail: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – https://youtu.be/IS5mwymTIJU

LastWeekTonight
Published Jun 7, 2015 – John Oliver explains why America’s bail system is better for the Reality TV industry than it is for the justice system.

Connect with Last Week Tonight online…

Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: http://Facebook.com/LastWeekTonight

Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: http://Twitter.com/LastWeekTonight

Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: http://www.hbo.com/lastweektonight

Category: Film & Animation

Despite the humorous portrayals, this is no laughing matter. Many lives are ruined because of the injustice of the Cash Bail system. America is punishing poor people for being … poor.

This is not our conclusion alone.

There are advocates that are trying to reform and transform this broken eco-system. Kudos to them. There are also organizations that are trying to help the most vulnerable of the victims of this legal dysfunction. These “Do Gooders” should be recognized, honored, promoted and emulated. See the news story of one such group in Atlanta, Georgia in Appendix B below.

(Click here to read the full article).

We too can do good and do better in our Caribbean homeland; we have no Bill of Rights impeding our need for progress. We have always maintained that we can more easily reform our homeland than to fix American society. We have no excuse not to change and improve our communities.

This is the quest of the Go Lean movement to reform and transform Caribbean society. The revelation of the ugly details of American jurisprudence is the purpose of this November 2019 blog series. The full catalog of this series on the Bill of Rights is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment – We can do better
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment – No slavery legacy
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments – Remember, Justice First
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

As this series refers to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states, this entry focuses more on the need for a roadmap to help poor people in our Caribbean society. While poverty must not be criminalized, we must also not be satisfied to just stop on criminal justice issues; we must make strenuous effort to forge a society where poverty can be mitigated and its “captors liberated”. Our goal is for the Caribbean homeland to be a place where people can prosper where they are planted. If we fail on the prospering side, then people will be inclined to just abandon their homeland. (This is a Push and a Pull issue).

Oops too late!

We already have an atrocious societal abandonment rate – some reports reflect 70 percent of the professional classes have already left from the independent countries. It is even worse still in dependent territories – 50 percent of everyone!

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of roadmap posits that economic optimizations must be coupled with security provisions; we cannot have one without the other. This is a Big Idea for the Caribbean to reform and transform its economic and security engines; this requires adopting new community ethos (attitudes and values), plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to empower poor people to elevate their circumstances. In the end, the goal is to find success in the journey to Middle Class. This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 222, entitled:

10 Battles in the War on Poverty

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty This regional re-boot will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. Following the model of the European Union, the CU will seek to streamline economic engines so as to increase jobs, standards of living and opportunities – increasing GDP. The CU will work to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play for all socio-economic classes.
2	Minimize Political Bureaucracy
3	Welfare versus “Work-fare” Many economists have argued that the US “War Against Poverty” – Welfare first – policies, actually had a negative impact on the economy because of their interventionist nature. This school of thought is that the best way to fight poverty is not through government spending but through economic growth, thus “Work-fare” is a better solution. In 1996 the US implemented a Welfare-to-Work program that had almost immediate results – welfare and poverty rates both declined during the late-1990s, leading many commentators to declare that the legislation was a success. The CU takes a similar stance: lead with jobs!
4	Entrepreneurial Values
5	Repatriation of Time, Talent and Treasuries
6	Family Planning Third World countries usually have higher birth rates than Developed countries. While not discouraging individual rights, the CU will facilitate better education, women’s health resources and access to prenatal healthcare.
7	Education Goals in Balance
8	Proactive about Healthcare Realities
9	Aging Population The CU will facilitate for the Caribbean Region to be the world’s best address for senior citizens. This will send the invitation to retirees (Caribbean Diaspora and foreign) to welcome their participation and contributions to CU society. The increase in the pool of participants and beneficiaries will extended added benefits to domestic seniors.
10	Raise Retirement Age

Yes, we can do better in the Caribbean homeland. We are hereby determined and committed to battling poverty in the 30 member-states. The Go Lean roadmap presents the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to do “whatever it takes” to lower the Push and Pull factors that cause people to abandon their communities. It is conceivable, believable and achievable to succeed.

Competing with America is not an option; the very continuation of our Caribbean culture depends on our ability to compete better. Lowering Push and Pull factors, at times, involve just messaging the people on the truth of the American experience.

So yes, we can be Better Than America; we can do better than the Bill of Rights (with its concern for tyranny). We can be more just, and more equal in our public safety mechanisms and the dispensation of justice; and do it without allowing tyranny. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – citizens and government leaders alike – to lean-in to this roadmap to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the ccidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix A – Observing and Reporting on America’s Criminal Injustice

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement over the years that highlighted the inequality in the American Justice System – clearly “justice is blind, deaf and dumb”, as there is a Great Divide in this country for Black vs White and Rich vs Poor. See a sample list here of those previous submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18421	Introducing Formal Reconciliations: Forging Justice After the Fact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321	Unequal Justice: Lessons from the American Sheriffs Eco-System
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18100	Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA/Slavery Legacy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17667	Is the US a ‘Just’ Society? Hardly! – Notice how the Rich is treated
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17267	Lessons learned for Justice: The need for Special Prosecutors
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16668	Justice and Economics – Both needed to forge change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413	Learning from the History of Lynching: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087	Pharma Injustice: Opioids & the FDA – ‘Fox guarding the Henhouse’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13826	Taking from the Poor to Give to the Rich
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13664	High Profile Sexual Harassment Accusers – Hard to get Justice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13081	America’s Race Relations – Spot-on for Protest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10654	Immigration Realities in the US – Better to Stay Home
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10532	Learning from Good and Bad Stereotypes: Japanese Internments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5238	Prisoners for Profit – Mostly Black-and-Brown Victimized
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	US versus Marcus Garvey: An Obvious Case of Racial Injustice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1143	Easy on White Collar Crimes & Health-care Fraud = $272 Billion/year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546	Book Review: ‘The Divide’ – American Injustice … Age of Wealth Gap

—————–

Appendix B – New Birth bails nonviolent offenders out of jail for fresh start
By: Shelia Poole, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has raised $120,000 to provide bail for first-time, nonviolent offenders in four Georgia counties.

The “Bail Out” program was designed to give men and women a second chance, beginning Easter weekend. [Pastor Jamal] Bryant will share details of the initiative during a press conference at 2 p.m. Saturday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, 6400 Woodrow Rd. in Stonecrest.

He is expected to joined by rapper and actor Clifford “T.I.” Harris, VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop” personality Scrapp DeLeon and representatives from local sheriffs’ offices.

The program targets DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Rockdale counties. It will also help with job readiness.

It began as a $40,000 local challenge within the New Birth congregation and quickly grew to $120,000 and a larger metro movement.

“I looked at what was happening in the prison pipeline and realized that the church voice had been muted on the issue of prison reform,” said Bryant, the megachurch’s senior pastor. “I realized that we needed to be part of what was taking place.”

And what better time, he noted, than during the observance of Easter, when Christians celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ which some churches refer to as “Resurrection Sunday.”
Source: Posted April 19, 2019; retrieved November 26, 2019 from: https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/pastor-jamal-bryant-scrapp-deleon-join-forces-help-nonviolent-offenders-get-new-start/0R1JARRBpUSBhW1nBMe1pN/

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Civil Rights, Justice, Model, Poverty, Power, Transform

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Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – Fifth & Sixth Amendments

Posted on November 25, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

“Plead the Fifth!”

We all know what that means: an arrested person elects to remain silent so as not to incriminate himself.

This is the public perception of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution – the Bill of Rights. This legal premise is quite ingenious – it is the mark of freedom. It would be tyranny for entities of the State to force people to testify … against themselves. The fact of the matter though is that the US is not the only country with these protections; consider this reference:

Whether arising from their constitutions, common law, or statute, many nations recognize a defendant’s right to silence.^[124] Those rights may be considerably more limited than those available to U.S. criminal defendants under the Miranda ruling.^[125]

So many countries allow a suspect to “Plead the Fifth”, without some of the compromises to justice when there is some failure with the perfect delivery of Criminal Proceedings by police officials. How do other countries manage it?

Some better …
Some worse…

There is an opportunity for a new Caribbean administration to do better than the American experience of “Pleading the Fifth” and still not jeopardize justice.

Can we have both?
Can we just have sanctions against the offending police personnel rather than setting a guilty person free … in the interest of justice?

Yes, we can …

It is conceivable, believable and achievable to maintain laws for Criminal Procedures and not compromise the interest of justice. Demanding justice does not mean allowing tyranny; but it is not black-or-white; there are shades of grey. This is why legal systems employ Judges, to make those case-by-case decisions.

This introduction allows us to define the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the US Constitution – subsets of the Bill of Rights, as follows:

Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.^[93]

The Fifth Amendment protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination and guarantees the rights to due process, grand jury screening of criminal indictments, and compensation for the seizure of private property under eminent domain. The amendment was the basis for the court’s decision in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which established that defendants must be informed of their rights to an attorney and against self-incrimination prior to interrogation by police.^[109]

Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.^[93]

The Sixth Amendment establishes a number of rights of the defendant in a criminal trial:

to a speedyand public trial

to trial by an impartial jury

to be informed of criminal charges

to confront witnesses

to compel witnesses to appear in court

to assistance of counsel^[110]

In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Court ruled that the amendment guaranteed the right to legal representation in all felony prosecutions in both state and federal courts.^[110]
Source: Retrieved November 24, 2019 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

As a result of these two Amendments, the wording of the Miranda Warning emerged (after 1963):

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time.

See Appendix VIDEO below for a fuller definition. This is why this commentary considers these two amendments in tandem.

As related, Constitutional Law scholars refer to these two amendments as Criminal Proceedings provisions. These are not Rocket Science or Brain Surgery; the cause for justice should not be this complicated.

Planners for a new Caribbean governance must also consider these Criminal Proceedings provisions from the onset (accession) of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). These provisions should be embedded in the initial confederation treaty – and then codified in the subsequent Constitution.

This is the continuation – 4 of 6 – of the November 2019 series from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. We publish this series as a supplement to the 2013 book, to support the thesis that we, in the Caribbean, can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. The full catalog of this series on the Bill of Rights is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment – We can do better
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment – No slavery legacy
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments – Remember, Justice First
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

As this series refers to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states, this entry focuses more on the need for security and justice optimizations. People are more inclined to abandon their homeland due to public safety deficiencies. This is why we must consider the actuality of the American Criminal Justice system as a competitive assessment. We want to compete better with America.

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of roadmap details to prioritize security needs along with economics ones. This is a Big Idea for the Caribbean to reform and transform its societal engines. This requires adopting new community ethos (attitudes and values), plus the executions of new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure our homeland. We can better remediate and mitigate crime in the region as a result. This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 178, entitled:

10 Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby creating an economic zone to promote and protect the interest of the member-states. (The GDP of the region will amount to $800 Billion according to 2010 figures). In addition, the treaty calls for a collective security agreement of the Caribbean nations so as to implement provisions to serve and protect the citizenry against systemic threats. The CU’s law enforcement agencies will enforce, investigate and prosecute economic crimes, including Racketeering, and Organized Crime Enterprises (RECO), plus any cross border gang activity. In addition, the CU will also provide funding, grants, training, technical consultancy, and support services for member-states law enforcement, including crime labs.
2	Deploy the Caribbean Police (CariPol) The CU Treaty will compel local police to have accountability and respect for the jurisdiction of the Caribbean Police. CariPol will be modeled after Interpol and the US FBI, with Inspectors for investigations and Marshalls for protection and interdiction. When the local Police call for escalation, CariPol responds. CariPol also “polices” the Police, with audit and compliance oversight for “use of force” reviews and Internal Affairs. The appeal to engage CariPol does not have to come from local police, but rather any constitutional institution (i.e. state governments, courts, or legislative bodies).
3	Regional Security Intelligence Bureau The CU law enforcement apparatus will deploy sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis systems, processes and personnel. This includes terrestrial and satellite surveillance (CATV, ankle monitoring) systems, eavesdropping, data mining and predictive modeling. Local and regional Police institutions would have access to these findings and results. The CU’s intelligence agency will also monitor police actions for public integrity assurance (corruption threats).
4	Prison Industrial Complex
5	Equip local police with advanced technologies
6	Witness Protection The CU will administer Witness Security (WitSec) for trustees before and after trials. There should be no safety consequences for doing the right thing. But since most of the “homelands” are islands, there is the need to relocate witness to other parts of the region. A regional solution far exceeds any state-wide attempts.
7	Enable the Private Industry of First Responders and Bounty Hunters
8	Hate Crime Qualifiers
9	Youth Crime Awareness and Prevention
10	Death Penalty Reform Change to Lethal Injection – this lowers the objections and vigorous criminal defense strategies. Resulting in more frequent executions; (this is the model of the State of Texas in the US). Death Row must not resemble “life in prison”.

People have left their beloved Caribbean homes – societal abandonment – over the issue of public safety – crime and the proper response. This threat is also cited as a Failed-State indicator. So we must reduce crime … at all cost. This is a mandate of the Go Lean movement, to do “whatever it takes” to lower the Push and Pull factors that cause people to abandon our Caribbean homeland. We want them to “prosper where we are planted” here.

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement over the years that highlighted the approaches to remediate and mitigate crime; see a sample list here; (though the list is exhaustive, it is still only a sample; crime abatement has been a priority focus for more than 5 years of this commentary):

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321	Unequal Justice: Lessons Learned from the American Sheriffs Eco-system
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16408	Home Violence leads to Street Violence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14424	Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476	Future Focused – Policing the Police
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	The Requirement for Better Security – ‘Must Love Dogs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400	Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11054	Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Bullying in Schools
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10959	See Something, Say Something … Do Something
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072	Securing the Homeland – On the Ground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7490	A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Domestic
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7179	Crime Specialist Urging: ‘Change Leaders in Crime Fight’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6693	Ten Puerto Rico Police Accused of Organized Criminal Network
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6385	Protecting Tourists from Electronic (ICT) Crimes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5435	China Internet Policing – Lessons/Model for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307	8th Violent Crime Warning to Bahamas Tourists – We must improve!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5304	Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863	Crime Surveillance Videos/Photos – Gleaning benefits
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	Improving the Crime-fighting Eco-system – Better 911 Systems
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684	Role Model for Justice – The Pinkertons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2259	The Criminalization of American Business – Lessons Learned
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1143	Health-care fraud in America; criminals take $272 billion a year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392	Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight

As previously related, the American Bill of Rights was designed to be embedded in the country’s legal foundation in such a way so as to prevent subsequent majorities from violating the rights of minorities. While this is good, it is also near-impossible to change the Constitution. We can do better in our Caribbean homeland than the American destinations. We have always maintained that we can more easily reform our homeland than some foreign country. There is no Bill of Rights for us – we have no excuse not to change and improve!

Yes, we can be Better Than America; we can do better than the Bill of Rights. We can be safer, yet still just; we can ensure justice without allowing tyranny. This is the heavy-lifting that we must commit to. We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————

APPENDIX C VIDEO – Due Process of Law: Crash Course Government and Politics #28 – https://youtu.be/UyHWRXAAgmQ

CrashCourse Published Aug 21, 2015 – This week Craig is going to continue our discussion of due process. Technically, we started last week with the 4th Amendment and Search and Seizure, but this week we’re going to look at the 5th and 6th Amendments and how they ensure a fair trial. We’ll talk about some stuff you tend to hear a lot on TV, like your right to an attorney and a jury of your peers and also terms like “double jeopardy” and “pleading the Fifth”. Now, this stuff can get pretty complicated, which is where lawyers come in handy, but it’s important to know your liberties to keep the police and other judicial officers in check.

Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios

Support is provided by Voqal: http://www.voqal.org

All attributed images are licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…

Category: Education

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Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – ‘Third & Fourth Amendments’: Justice First

Posted on November 24, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Providing the stewardship for a federal government is hard work, with a lot of heavy-lifting tasks and responsibilities. No short cuts!

So many times, governmental institutions – think security forces – abuse their position/strength and exploit the rights and property of ordinary citizens. Good governance mandates that we be On Guard for such abuses. When strong individuals abuse weaker ones in society, we call it bullying. When governmental institutions do it, we call it:

Tyranny

The subject of tyranny was front-and-center in the debates during the Constitutional Conventions in the 1780’s, at the dawn of the United States of America. Today’s Caribbean stakeholders can benefit greatly from studying this American History and gleaning the wisdom afforded. Most importantly, we can stand on the shoulders of those American Founding Fathers and reach even greater heights. We get to do this exercise now without the flawed orthodoxy of those days: no racial and gender discrimination – notice the reference to Founding Fathers and not Founding Mothers.

This introduction allows us to define the Third and Fourth Amendments of the US Constitution – subsets of the Bill of Rights.

Third Amendment to the United States Constitution
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.^[93]

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.^[93]

Constitutional scholars refer to these two amendments as Anti-Tyranny provisions. Imagine the tyranny of armed soldiers commandeering houses and work places, demanding access to and hospitality on a private citizen’s property. Also imagine the tyranny of security personnel (armed checkpoints or police forces) invading private spaces without probable cause. (See Appendix C VIDEO below for a fuller definition). This is why this commentary considers these two amendments in tandem.

Planners for a new Caribbean governance must consider these Constitutional provisions from the onset (accession) of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This is the charter of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, to present a roadmap for the introduction of the CU and to spell out the details for the confederation treaty – and subsequent Constitution. The CU/Go Lean roadmap presents these 3 goals:

Optimize of the economic engines;
Establish a security apparatus and justice institutions to serve and protect the people and resultant economic engines;
Improve Caribbean governance with the deployment of this federal authority and streamlining the member-state administrations.

There are so many opportunities for abuse.

The Third Amendment is straightforward and rarely comes under dispute – requiring Supreme Court interpretations. There is an opportunity for the new Caribbean to be better. In contrast, the Caribbean reality can sustain a No Quatering provision.

The Fourth Amendment however has been a constant source of challenges and interpretation expansions. See a legal reference here:

The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and seizure (including arrest) must be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer who has sworn by it. The amendment is the basis for the exclusionary rule, which mandates that evidence obtained illegally cannot be introduced into a criminal trial.^[107] The amendment’s interpretation has varied over time; its protections expanded under left-leaning courts such as that headed by Earl Warren and contracted under right-leaning courts such as that of William Rehnquist.^[108]

As for this Fourth Amendment comparison, there is the opportunity to prioritize justice over law-and-order in regards to the “Exclusionary Rules”. Consider the reality of unlawful “search and seizures”, where the evidence is then disqualified. This may lead to miscarriages of justice, where guilty parties continue unabated and innocent victims never get their just relief. Such a system, as is the case in the US, is truly broken, and encourages extra-judicial retaliations, which exacerbates criminal activity in society; think street justice.

We can do better! (See more on the impact of the Fourth Amendment on the modern challenges of Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) activities in Appendix D).

We can allow for sanctions and retributions against security forces/justice institutions for procedural violations while still pursuing justice. This approach works in civil proceeding, international peace-keeping and political cases (think impeachment); so there could be some “Solomonic” approach in criminal proceedings – especially when no death penalty is attached. (Ancient Israel King Solomon threatened death to a child in order to ascertain the true identity of the real mother – this proved to be indisputable wisdom).

Other countries have such a system. In fact only the US, and a few other countries, have absolute “Exclusionary Rules”. As is evidenced in Appendices A & B, many other countries try to adapt a case-by-case approach where the probative value of evidence can still be factored in when considering judgment, in the interest of justice. It is obvious that there are no perfect lines between Criminal Proceedings, Exclusionary Rules and Justice. (Life is not black-and-white; there are many shades of grey).

This is the continuation – 3 of 6 – of the November 2019 series from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Since we publish a series of teaching commentaries every month – as a supplement to the 2013 book – this series examines the thesis that we, in the Caribbean, can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. As we analyze the American Bill of Rights and the Third & Fourth Amendments, we realize that tyranny must always be monitored and mitigated in any society concerned with justice. The full catalog of this series is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment – We can do better
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment – No slavery legacy
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments – Remember, Justice First
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

As this series refers to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states. This effort must include the justice institutions. People are more inclined to abandon their homeland if there are no justice assurances; privacy is rarely a determination. This is why we must consider the actuality of American jurisprudence in our competitive assessment. Especially considering modern challenges of Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT).

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of roadmap details on the security and justice mandates to elevate our society; this includes the community ethos (attitudes and values) that we need to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure the Caribbean homeland. The roadmap stresses that in addition to economic reforms, we must equally reform/transform our security-justice eco-systems. Consider this excerpt on security principles from Page 23:

Book Excerpt: c. Security Principles

… This roadmap for Caribbean integration declares that peace, security and public safety is tantamount to economic prosperity. This is why an advocacy for the Greater Good must be championed as a community ethos. A prime precept is that it is “better to know than to not know” – this implies that privacy is secondary to security. A secondary precept is that bad things will happen to good people and so the community needs to be prepared to contend with the risks that can imperil the homeland.

c-1. Privacy versus Public Protection
The institutions and agencies of the CU must respect the privacy of Caribbean residents in their homes, vehicles and offices. But when a person goes out into the public, there cannot be any expectation of privacy, it is then the community ethos that public protection is paramount to individual privacy rights. Therefore the community will work with law enforcement agencies to identify, warn and report any terroristic threats or suspicious activities.

Imagine a suicide bomber attending Carnival and detonating a bomb and killing hundreds. Far-fetched? Yet incidences like this are not uncommon, not just in failed-states like Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, but also recently in the UK, Spain and in Boston USA during their annual marathon in April 2013. Would such an event happen in some CU member-state? We hope not. But hope alone cannot be our only defense; we must prepare, plan, monitor and mitigate – we must police our communities. We have a number of population groups that have been cited as high risk: Muslim fundamentalists, Black Nationalists, White Supremacists, and especially narco-terrorists/gang participants. This roadmap therefore posits that intelligence gathering must commence at the outset of this federation, and public protection must “trump” personal privacy.

c-2. Whistleblower Protection
The CU must allow for anonymous reporting of potential threats. If a report (whistleblower) is harassed as a result, the community must come to his/her aid and protection. For starters, the CU will offer toll free numbers and mobile-apps and web-interfaces to allow anonymous reporting of suspicious activities.

“If you see something, say something”.

c-3. Witness Security & Protection
Beyond initial reporting, the CU will allow for Witness Security (WitSec) and Protection so that there will be no bad consequences for doing the right thing. Since most of the “homeland” are islands, there are not a lot of places whistleblowers and eye-witnesses can go to seek refuge. Therefore, all communities in the region must come together to provide a joint solution. This responsibility, WitSec, therefore becomes an exclusive federal (a la “Federation”) deliverable.

c-4. Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
The CU security pact must defend against regional threats, including domestic terrorism. This includes gangs and their junior counterparts, bullies. The community must accept that young ones will go astray, so Juvenile Justice programs should be centered on the goal to rehabilitate them into good citizens, before it’s too late. So community messaging (life-coaching and school-mentoring programs) must be part of the campaign for anti-bullying and mitigations.
Source: Book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 23

To do better than our American counterpart would mean doing “whatever it takes” to ensure justice in our society. This is among the mandates of the Social Contract, “where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights”.

Remember Edward Snowden? See summary here:

Title: NSA records all phone calls in the Bahamas, according to Snowden
According to the below [a] news article, the US National Security Agency is gathering and analyzing mobile phone calls on Bahamians talking to Bahamians. This article raises so many questions for a Caribbean consideration:

Is this OK with the political/social leaders of the Bahamas?

Is this OK with the people of the Bahamas?

Why is this effort exerted by the US and not the Bahamas?

Could the local obstacle be the costs of the ICT investment?

Is there any value to this intelligence gathering? Have crimes and terroristic attacks been mitigated?

The book Go Lean…Caribbean identifies that intelligence gathering & analysis can be advantageous for the security of the member-states in the Caribbean region. Whatever your politics, you want a measure of peace-and-security in the region. Based on the foregoing article, there is some value to a cross-border, regional intelligence/security apparatus.

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted the need and provisions for optimizing justice institutions in the region; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18371	Unequal Justice: Student Loans Could Dictate Justice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18351	Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18337	Unequal Justice: Bullying Magnified to Disrupt Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321	Unequal Justice: Sheriffs and the need for ‘soft’ Tyrannicide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17267	Way Forward – For Justice: Special Prosecutors
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16668	Justice and Economics – Need to Optimize Bankruptcies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5238	#ManifestJustice Activism – Optimizing Prisoners for Profit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684	Role Model for Justice – The Pinkertons

In the opening submission of this series, it was articulated how the American Bill of Rights was designed to be embedded in the country’s legal foundation in 1791 so that subsequent majorities could not readily violate the rights of minorities. This is a good premise … on paper. But the reality is that the legal foundation is equally hard to reform even if it is discovered to be harmful for the overall society in subsequent years, decades and centuries. Think:

First Amendment protections for Fake News or …
Second Amendment protections for Assault Weapons.

Fixing America is not so easy; many people echo the feeling of “God-damned Bill of Rights“; think of the passions of the young people at the “March For Our Lives” in March 2018.

We can do better here at home in the Caribbean – where the American Bill of Rights do not apply – We have no excuse!

Yes, we can be Better Than America; we can do better than the Bill of Rights. This is a tall order and Big Deal for the stewards of a new Caribbean. But this Big Deal is still conceivable, believable and achievable with a coordinated regional effort – “many hands make a big job, small”. This is how we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix A – Comparative analysis of exclusionary rules in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Italy

By: Yue Ma
Policing: An International Journal – ISSN: 1363-951X
Publication Date: 1 September 1999
Abstract
The exclusionary rule remains one of the most controversial doctrines in America’s constitutionalized criminal procedure. Jurists and commentators criticize the American exclusionary rule as a rule unique to American jurisprudence. Though American jurists and commentators’ criticism focuses on the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, the criticism of the American exclusionary rule with reference to practices in foreign countries serves to create and maintain the misconception that the United States is the only country that has the exclusionary rule. The belief that the exclusionary rule exists only in the United States is far from accurate. This article examines the historical development and the current status of exclusionary rules in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Italy. Attentions are especially devoted to analyzing the characteristics of the American exclusionary rule with reference to exclusionary rules in other countries.

Source: Ma, Y. (1999), “Comparative analysis of exclusionary rules in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Italy”, Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 280-303. https://doi.org/10.1108/13639519910285053

—————–

Appendix B – The Exclusionary Rule: A Comparative Analysis

Source: Shellie Labell (2014). Leonard Birdsong Legal Blog Site; Published January 28, 2014 retrieved from: http://birdsongslaw.com/2014/01/28/comparative-approach-exclusionary-rule/

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APPENDIX C VIDEO – Search and Seizure: Crash Course Government and Politics #27 – https://youtu.be/_4O1OlGyTuU

CrashCourse
Published Aug 15, 2015 – This week Craig talks about police searches and seizures. Now, the fourth amendment says that you have the right to be protected against “unreasonable searches and seizures” but what exactly does this mean? Well, it’s complicated. The police often need warrants issued with proof of probable cause, but this isn’t always the case – such as when you’re pulled over for a moving violation. We’ll finish up with the limitations of these protections and discuss one group of people in particular that aren’t protected equally – students.

Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios

Support is provided by Voqal: http://www.voqal.org

All attributed images are licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…

Category: Education

—————–

APPENDIX D VIDEO – Beyond Search & Seizure | Jeffrey Rosen | TEDxPhiladelphia – https://youtu.be/iV4q4nRPyoY

TEDx Talks

Published Feb 9, 2016 – Ubiquitous surveillance is threatening American values of privacy and equal justice in ways the founders of the Constitution never could’ve imagined when they penned the Fourth Amendment that protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures. In this spellbinding talk, Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, describes how the use of public surveillance systems, brain scans, DNA collection and consumer profiling calls for new translations of the amendment so that it protects privacies in the 21st century that the Constitution’s framers took for granted in the 18th. Recognizing that ubiquitous surveillance is akin to the general warrants that sparked the American Revolution, we must all demand zones of immunity that protect privacy and equality in the digital age.

Jeffrey Rosen is president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a museum and civic-education headquarters dedicated to non-partisan Constitutional discussion and debate. Well-versed in American freedoms and rights, he is a law professor at George Washington University and a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and has been referred to as “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.” Among many other works, he is the author of The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America, and co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

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Civil Rights, History, Model, Power, Security

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Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – Second Amendment: No Slavery Legacy

Posted on November 23, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

We – the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – said we were going to break-down the BIG FAT LIE and ascertain the truth of the “masterpiece” of the American Bill of Rights. Here we go:

The “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” with its laissez-fare attitudes towards gun ownership and stockpiling of lethal weapons is not a positive attribute.

It is Bad … for America, and the its role-modeling for the rest of the world.

“Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter”. This was the clear warning from a previous blog-commentary from June 23, 2018:

Title: ‘Time to Go’ – Mandatory Guns: “Say it Ain’t So”
For our American counterparts, this [statement] is apropos: “Live by the Gun; Die by the Gun”.

Consider the recent school shootings and mass shootings, is there any doubt to the fulfillment of these words: America and guns go hand in hand.

Here’s proof! [There is] this town in Georgia [that] tried to mandate that every home own a gun. …

Say it Ain’t So! Is this the life that Caribbean people want? It should not be!

Yet, we are losing so many of our people to this eventuality. Our people leave due to “Push and Pull” reasons. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that moves people to want to get way; and “pull” factors refer to the impressions and perceptions that America is better. Surely a mandatory gun culture is not better!

The purpose of this commentary is to relate two strong points of contention:

We need to dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to the American homeland.

We need to encourage the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homeland.

… Despite all the efforts to change this disposition, America’s consistency with guns continue, even now to the point that some communities want to mandate that every household have a gun. This is not the case in the Caribbean … if only, we can “prosper where planted” there.

Yes, we can!

… underlying the Second Amendment (of the US Constitution) is the white supremacy defect. This ignominious Second Amendment is a product of the previous Slave Culture, as one original motivation in 1791 was to suppress insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts ^[60][61][62]. A previous blog-commentary entitled 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US detailed this rationale:

The “right to bear arms” has a personal application beyond the country’s entitlement to maintain a militia. This “right” has been interpreted in a manner in which any normal “man” can get possession of guns and other armament. This proliferation of guns in society results in the highest rate of gun violence in the world, even an unconscionable rate of school shootings.The Go Lean roadmap purports that this status has also caused discord – a gross abuse and availability of illegal guns – in bordering communities of Mexico, and Caribbean states of the Bahamas, and the DR. This propels our gun-related crime.

The US still has some societal defects – racism and Crony-Capitalism for example – that are so imbrued that they are tied to the country’s DNA. This is why the Go Lean movement posits that it is easier to effect change at home in the Caribbean, than in the foreign country of the US.

The Bill of Rights sounds so altruistic, but when we break it down, we find that it was perpetuating some of darkest motives of the human experience: like Slavery and the African experience in the New World.

The US Constitution made this possible – how else could a small number of slave masters dominate a large population of slaves on a plantation – it permitted it; normalized it and glorified it. Surely any fruit from such a rotten tree must itself be:

Rotten.

Do you still think that US Constitution and/or Bill of Rights is a masterpiece?

This is the continuation – 2 of 6 – of the November 2019 series from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Each month, we publish a series of teaching commentaries – as a supplement to the 2013 book. This month, we are examining the thesis that we, in the Caribbean, can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. As we analyze the American Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment, we realize that any jurisprudence without a motivation to maintain an evil institution like slavery already stands above the flaws of the US Constitution. The Judeo-Christion origins of the US Constitution belies the teachings of its founder – Jesus Christ – who taught that institutions must be built on solid moral foundations. This was clearly absent in the US historicity. The full catalog of this series is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

As this series refers to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states, we are reminded that we can easily implement common-sense gun-controls and restrict the availability of lethal weapons and our citizens access to them. We can do better than America’s experiences – we do not have the Slavery legacy to protect. We can codify our own Constitutional provisions with better than this faulty language:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.^[93]

To do better than our American counterpart would encompass doing “whatever it takes” to keep our people safe; to monitor and mitigate against any and all perceived threats, foreign or domestic. We need common sense gun regulations. This is the epitome of the Social Contract, “where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights”.

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of roadmap details on the security and justice mandates to elevate our society; this includes the community ethos (attitudes and values) that we need to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure the Caribbean homeland. Yes, the roadmap details “how” our region’s reboot can reform and transform the societal engines to provide better protections and gun control. This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 179, entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Gun Control

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The [CU] treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby creating an economic zone to promote and protect the interest of the member-states. In addition, the treaty calls for a collective security pact to ensure homeland security and assuage against systemic threats. The CU will elevate and consolidate the registration, gun-permitting process to regional oversight. The goal is to apply learned-lessons from the US example. For Third World countries, as most of the CU apply, undisciplined gun use affect the Failed-State indicator: Criminalization / De-Legitimization of the State. The CU’s mandate is to manage the image and reality of Failed-States.
2	Background Checks It’s a best practice to restrain certain aspects of the population access to guns (felons, defendants on bail, targets of restraining orders). This includes gun purchasing and ownership. So the CU Gun Registration regulation (within CariPol) will enforce strict background checks for ALL purchases: retail, wholesale and private-party. This regulation will also be post-reactive in the event a CU resident becomes a subject of legal/police action so as to suspend their gun rights.
3	Ballistics Testing The CU will extend gun registration/regulation beyond our American neighbors. To facilitate subsequent investigation of gun crimes, every registered gun must complete ballistic tests and the results must be on (computer) file at CariPol.
4	Mental Illness Data It is a public safety best practice to restrict gun ownership to anyone with documented mental illness. Again, the CU will extend the regulation beyond the American model and include mental health treatments and psychotropic prescriptions.
5	Intelligence Gathering and Big Data Analysis
6	United States (FBI / ATF) Coordination
7	Private Security Bodyguards
8	Private First Responders / Bounty Hunters
9	Gun Buybacks The CU will maintain a constant program for anonymous gun “buybacks”. These endeavors will be funded with CU funds and coordinated with not-for-profit foundations. The acquired guns will all be registered, for serial numbers and ballistic testing results, and then destroyed; unless needed for legal prosecutions.
10	Public Relations / Anti-Bullying Campaign

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted the eco-system of common sense gun control and regulations; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15658	Sad: Caribbean Diaspora Tragedy with the American Gun Culture
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14556	Observing the Change … with Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14114	School Shootings ‘R’ Us – 11 in 23 Days
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13213	‘Pulled’ – Despite American Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	“Must Love Dogs” – Providing K9 Solutions for Better Gun Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400	Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11332	Boston Bombing Anniversary – Learning Lessons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072	Model: Shots-Fired Monitoring – Securing the Homeland

Many Caribbean people have fled their homeland seeking refuge in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”; some of them have lost their life as a tragic consequence.

Rest in Peace: Botham Jean
Rest in Peace: Helena Ramsay

This reasoning is why the Go Lean movement have repeatedly urged Caribbean people to Stay Home and/or Return Home. Our motivation is logical, practical and methodical; (also see Appendix VIDEO below as it relates the currency of “Guns and Race” in America still):

We can more effectively effect change here in the homeland, than trying to reform or transform a foreign destination … that was specifically designed for the suppression of Black-and-Brown people.

Yes, we can be Better Than America by building up our Caribbean homeland. It is conceivable, believable and achievable that we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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APPENDIX VIDEO – Reassessing the Same Old Debate on Gun Control: The Daily Show – https://youtu.be/U0UUrMmoPME

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Published on Oct 9, 2017 – In the aftermath of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Neal Brennan explains why the debate over gun control in the U.S. needs to change.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

Category: Comedy
License: Standard YouTube License

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History, Power, Security

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Better Than … the ‘Bill of Rights’ – We can do better!

Posted on November 22, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

What makes America better?
Our freedom …
… our Constitution is a masterpiece;
… but other countries have freedom too. – Dialogue from TV Show Newsroom (See Appendix VIDEO below).

Many people still believe that America is the “greatest” because of its Constitution. It is time now to break-down this BIG FAT LIE of a thesis and then ascertain the truth. Remember this assertion:

When I was a boy, heaven was up here – [pointing in a gesture] – and America was here [only a little lower in the gesturing]. – See previous Go Lean blog-commentary with this portrayal.

Is America just a product of good advertising or is there any truth to this “masterpiece” assessment of the Constitution?

Firstly, that “masterpiece” Constitution was ratified in 1789 and then immediately engaged in an Amendment process to add-more and make it better. There was the pronounced need to ensure protection against any emergence of tyranny by the new government. These protections were codified in the First 10 Amendments, better known as the Bill of Rights; this is the feature that valued the new Constitution as a masterpiece.

Let’s examine these closer …

American History presents the case of an overarching need to rebel against the tyranny of imperial power. This was the motivation for the country’s Founding Fathers and the originators of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. That document codified this motivation with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Why is this American Constitutional History important from a Caribbean perspective?

Today we have to compete with America, but now they are economic tyrants due to their size, strength and wealth; they are “eating our lunch”. We have a critical brain drain problem in which we lose so many of our citizens, who have abandoned their homelands … for American shores. When they do this and naturalize as American citizens, they are required to take an oath and vow to defend this same Constitution; with these sentiments:

… that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

Let’s keep it real! Those in the Caribbean, where 29-of-the-30 member-states reflect a Majority Black-and-Brown ethnic reality, that 1789 Constitution allowed you to be enslaved and only valued you at 3/5^th the value of a man. So perhaps that Constitution needs to be “taken down a notch” in its glorification. (Note: the 13^th Amendment abolished slavery, but after nearly 100 years later in 1865).

The effort in this commentary is part of the quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play, even Better Than America. Therefore, we too need a masterpiece quality in our laws and statues. How do we compare? How should we compare? In addition, with our effort to appoint New Guard for our regional governance, how can we apply the lessons from America’s Constitutional History?

Here’s the encyclopedic reference to those Bill of Rights … that supposedly made the US Constitution such a masterpiece:

Reference: United States Bill of Rights
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution, and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the U.S. Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those found in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the Magna Carta (1215).^[1]
…
The Supreme Court … concluded … that the founders intended the Bill of Rights to put some rights out of reach from majorities, ensuring that some liberties would endure beyond political majorities.^{[88][89][90][91]}

First Amendment – Freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble/petition

Second Amendment – The right of the people to keep and bear Arms

Third Amendment – Restricting the quartering of soldiers in a private house

Fourth Amendment – Restrictions against unreasonable searches and seizures

Fifth Amendment – Protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination and guarantees the rights to due process, grand jury screening of criminal indictments, and compensation for the seizure of private property under eminent domain.

Sixth Amendment – Grants the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury in the jurisdiction where the crime have been committed.

Seventh Amendment – Guarantees jury trials in federal civil cases

Eighth Amendment – Restricts against excessive bail and cruel-and-unusual punishments

Ninth Amendment – Reserves the privilege that “other” rights not enumerated in the Constitution are retained by the people

Tenth Amendment – Reinforces that powers not delegated to the Federal Government as being reserved to the States or the people.

Source: Retrieved November 21, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

For the new Caribbean, we want to compete better with America. We do not want “them eating our lunch”; we want to appeal to our people that they can better succeed in their quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness right here at home.

Yes, we can “prosper where we are planted”. However, this quest must be more than just a vision (dream); we must have the legal structure to ensure societal success. We must conceive, believe and achieve!

This is the charter and the roadmap for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Every month, we publish a series of teaching commentaries – as a supplement to the 2013 book; for November 2019, we are presenting the thesis that we can be Better Than America, in words (law) and in action. We are presenting this thesis by analyzing the American Bill of Rights and how our proposed treaty – to confederate a new Caribbean regional administration – is founded on even better principles than theirs. The full catalog of this series is detailed as follows:

Better than the Bill of Rights: First Amendment – We can do better
Better than the Bill of Rights: Second Amendment – No slavery legacy
Better than the Bill of Rights: Third & Fourth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Fifth & Sixth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Seventh & Eighth Amendments
Better than the Bill of Rights: Ninth & Tenth Amendments

In this series, a reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of the 30 Caribbean member-states for the Greater Good. We need to ensure that governmental institutions never abuse Human Rights or become tyrannical in their execution of the implied Social Contract (where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights).

When Human Rights are abused, we fail to guarantee “justice for all”, and our people seize upon the opportunity to leave, and then our critical plight of societal abandonment worsens even more. people seek refuge on foreign shores, like America. So the need to optimize our governance and justice institutions is ever-present; and it transcends borders, politics, class, language and race. It is a Human Right for people to feel justified to pursue justice – even heightened as a religious devotion – for themselves and for their children.

This need for justice, free of tyranny, have been elaborated upon in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321	Unequal Justice – A series on the Tyranny of American Sheriffs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18100	Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17667	Is the US a ‘Just’ Society? Hardly!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14413	Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476	Future Focused – Policing the Police
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10222	Waging a Successful War on ‘Terrorism’ and Bullying
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5238	Prisoners for Profit – Abuses in the Prison Industrial Complex
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5304	Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’

The First Amendment was also first in importance; it stressed freedom of speech and free flow of knowledge. This freedom was presented as a mitigation to ignorance, orthodoxy and dogma – which many times stemmed from religious practices. The American experience, therefore, called for a Separation of Church and State so as to not elevate one group of religious practitioners over another group. The thinking – derived from the European Enlightenment movement – assessed that religious orthodoxy had a dysfunctional past. The Enlightened strategy was to divest all religions from State Power, therefore de-clawing the fangs that had tyrannized previous societies. During those Bad Old Days, the religious tyranny was so unjust that historians dubbed European civilization as in the Dark Ages. The mitigation from the Enlightened Movements brought a new progression in liberalism.

The First Amendment was designed to continue that progression in American society.

This is also the design for the Go Lean roadmap.

The Caribbean member-states need progress and more liberalism. The imperial forces that tyrannized American society also afflicted the history of the Caribbean but we never rebelled; no revolutionary change; only evolutionary change. There is therefore the need to weed out many of the bad practices of our orthodox society. This quest – battling against orthodoxy – aligns with many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17915	What Went Wrong – We never had our War
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18421	Introducing Formal Reconciliations to now ‘Refuse to Lose’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16534	European Reckoning – Christianity’s Indictment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13579	Colonialism’s Bloody History Revisited
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11812	State of Caribbean Union: Hope and Change from Orthodoxy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10532	Learning from Stereotypes – Good and Bad
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216	Waging a Successful War on Orthodoxy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9595	Vision and Values for a ‘New’ Caribbean

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society, for better protection of Human Rights. One advocacy provides lessons that we learn by considering history of the US Constitution. See excerpts and headlines from this advocacy from Page 145 entitled:

10 Lessons from the US Constitution

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
This treaty calls for the unification of the region into a single market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 member-states and 42 million people. The mission of the CU is to provide economic empowerment, homeland security and emergency management (disaster recovery). The CU is a neo-governmental entity, modeled after the European Union (EU). The EU attempted to codify a Constitution, though not ratified by the national legislatures of France and the Netherlands. So the EU Parliament accomplished the same objectives by amending the original treaties with the provisions from the proposed Constitution. The lesson is that the legal protections must be codified in the CU Treaty.

2 Articles of Confederation
The 1789 US Constitution was preceded by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, an agreement among the 13founding states that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. Its drafting by the Continental Congress began in mid-1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification in late 1777. The formal ratification by all 13 states was completed in early 1781. Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Indian relations. Nevertheless, the weak government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key Nationalists. On March 4, 1789, the Articles were replaced with the new US Constitution. This new Constitution provided for a much stronger national government with a chief executive (the President), courts, and taxing powers.

3 Amendments – Living Document
The US Constitution can be changed through the amendment process. Constitutional amendments are added to it, altering its effect. Changing the “fundamental law” is a two-part process: amendments are proposed then they must be ratified by the states. The Constitution has been amended 17 additional times (for a total of 27 amendments).

4 Bill of Rights – Immediately Proposed
The first ten amendments, ratified by 3/4 of the states in 1791, are known as the Bill of Rights. These 10 Amendments, limitations to protect the natural rights of liberty/property, were proposed almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified (adopted by the First Congress in August 21, 1789), recognizing an important fact that the public (average man) may have to be gradually conditioned to acknowledge and accept the rights of other people in a progressive society.

5 Values -vs- Verbiage
The US Constitution was written, followed by its amendments, to use broad language – a model for the CU – so that the principles primarily can be applied in statues for everyday laws. This indicates that constitutions should be strategic, depicting the values and vision of a society, while the legislative products (statues) should be tactical and specific.

6 US Court Interpretations ==> Model for CU

7 Ratifying – High Burden

8 Repeal and Secession

9 Slavery!

10 International Treaties

The Caribbean must foster a better society that mitigates the tyranny of religious orthodoxy. We can benefit from the American example of how they weeded out uncanny religious influences; they made a constitutional provision – First Amendment to the United States Constitution – that separated religious influences from federal governance (and later adopted for state governments):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.^[93]

The Go Lean roadmap calls for Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Press and Freedom of Assembly, but we can do better than the American experience:

Freedom of Religion – Despite the 1789 start, America didn’t show respect for the “non-Christian” faiths of its indigenous people until the 1960’s. The Go Lean roadmap calls for respect of all people in all 30 member-states and respect for all of their religious devotions: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others including Indigenous or Animists.
Freedom of Press – Fake News is a modern pang of distress; the Social Contract must allow for a quest for truth and protection against erroneous information. We can do better!.
Freedom of Assembly – The actuality of Self-Governing Entities may allow for a declaration of Private Property. This would differ from the American standard in that economic interest can be shielded from demanding local governance.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens – to lean-in to this comprehensive Go Lean roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. Our Caribbean can be even better than America as a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of [failed communities] … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments like … the tenants of the US Constitution.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – The Newsroom – America is not the greatest country in the world anymore…(Restricted language) – https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk

Published on Jul 21, 2012 – Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) hits the nail straight on the head in the opening minutes on HBO’s new series ‘The Newsroom’. He is asked by a college student a simple question during a campus debate. ‘What makes America the greatest country in the world?’. Daniels initially goes the politically correct route then at the last minute goes with a honest, bold, straight forward answer that sums up a lot of the world’s problems that so many are afraid to accept because we all want to believe in our system and that it is our system that works. The evidence that is out there today is to the contrary and he discloses such information in his argument. We used to be the world’s best of the best and now we are just pretending. The first step to solving a problem is to admit there is one.

Category: Entertainment
Show: The Newsroom : We Just Decided To

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An Ode to JPMorganChase – This is how ‘Change’ happens

Posted on November 19, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

Plan. Do. Review.

We told you change was imminent … for Detroit.

We, the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), published a detailed blog-commentary on May 22, 2014 – 5 plus years ago – on the plans for this one bank, JPMorganChase, who was advocating for a turn-around for the distressed City of Detroit in Michigan (USA). This is an excerpt from that previous submission:

The same as there is profit involved in destruction and construction, there is profit to be made in community redevelopment, within a city or even for a region. …

The City of Detroit is in crisis. In July 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to seek bankruptcy protection. It is currently $19 billion in debt and has an unemployment rate of about 14% – more than double the national average. This is why the study of Detroit is such an ideal model for the Caribbean. We have many communities within the Caribbean’s 30 member-states with similar unemployment, urban blight, brain drain, and acute hopelessness.

… the rebirth of Detroit will be financed, in part, with $100 million of community investment dollars from JPMorganChase. The Go Lean roadmap presents a plan to generate funding to Pay for Change (Page 101). Both the JPMorganChase / Detroit plan and the CU/Go Lean plan extend over a 5 year period. The Detroit plan is branded the “Motor City Makeover”; this branding and messaging is important for soliciting support and participation from the community in general. This parallels to the CU/Go Lean effort to foster the attitudes and motivations to forge change from Caribbean stakeholders. This is defined in the book as a community ethos. One such ethos is turn-around: a collective vision, succeeded by appropriate steps and actions, to reject the status quo and demand change.

How has the “Motor City Makeover” been received in the 5 years since? Has the community responded? Have they supported this advocacy? Has there been return on the investment?

Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.

See here, this review of the JPMorganChase effort from the news magazine 60 Minutes, as broadcasted on November 10, 2019. See this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – A mega-bank’s data-driven investment in Detroit – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jamie-dimon-jp-morgan-chase-ceo-makes-data-focused-investment-in-detroit-60-minutes-2019-11-10/

Published on November 10, 2019 – JPMorganChase is using data to invest more efficiently, helping entrepreneurs open businesses in parts of the city that most need their services.
Used for entertainment [and educational] purposes only. The property and rights for this video/audio go to ©CBS.

In summary, JPMorganChase invested in Detroit and now has returns on that investment. This is how ‘Change’ happens.

The Go Lean movement also invested (time) in Detroit …

… we too have returns, rewards and reflections from our time of observing-and-reporting from there – which started 5 years ago. Consider the many lessons-learned about turn-around and re-development from these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14825	May Day! May Day! We Need Help With Jobs!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11453	Location Matters, Even in a Virtual World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11386	Building Better Cities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10140	Lessons Learned: Detroit demolishes thousands of abandoned structures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669	Detroit makes Community College free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7789	An Ode to Detroit – Good Luck on Trade!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7601	Beware of Vulture Capitalists – Lesson from Detroit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7268	Detroit giving schools their ‘Worst Shot’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7235	Flint, Michigan – A Cautionary Tale on Infrastructure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6965	Secrecy, corruption and ‘conflicts of interest’ pervade state governments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6609	Before and After Photos Showing Detroit’s Riverfront Transformation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6269	Education & Economics: Welcome to Detroit, Mr. President
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6022	Caribbean Diaspora in Detroit … Celebrating Heritage
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5055	A Lesson from an Empowering Family in Detroit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4913	Ann Arbor: Model for ‘Start-up’ Cities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4476	De-icing Detroit’s Winter Roads: Impetuous & Short Term
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3713	NEXUS: Facilitating Detroit-Windsor Cross-Border Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3326	M-1 Rail: Alternative Motion in the Motor City
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3311	Detroit to exit historic bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3164	Michigan Unemployment – Then and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3152	Making a Great Place to Work® – A Detroit Example
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480	A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1656	Blue is the New Green – Managing Michigan’s Water Resources

These past 5 years have been busy for the Go Lean movement. In addition to observing-and-reporting on Detroit, we have also observed-and-reported on JPMorganChase – from the inside; (this writer worked for JPMorganChase and Jaime Dimon on 2 separate occasions). See the lessons-learned from this financial institution from these previous Go Lean commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16836	Crypto-currency: Here comes ‘Trouble’; Here comes “JPM Coin”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002	Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance; JPMC Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184	JPMorganChase spent $10 billion on ‘Fintech’ for 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=970	JP Morgan Chase $100 million Detroit investment not just for Press

This tenure with JPMorganChase now comes to an end; as we repatriate back to our Caribbean homeland. And so we say:

Ode to JPMorganChase; thanks for the lessons-learned.

These lessons-learned may be more than just pedestrian; they may actual change our Caribbean world. Like Detroit, we need to redevelop, turn-around and reboot. The JPMorganChase example above may just be an example of the Corporate Vigilantism that we need to forge change in society.

Corporate Vigilantism?

This has been exhaustingly defined in a previous Go Lean commentary; consider this excerpt:

Corporate Vigilantism – can be effective for forging change. Imagine the pressure: no credit line, mortgage, installment loan, credit card processing, nor check-cashing for the business. This can affect a company’s ability to meet payroll or operate as an ongoing concern. This is called controlling the purse strings.

And what is the bank asking for their continuation of business-as-usual?

Common sense … regulations …

We have been paying more than the usual attention to this banking industry, company (JPMorganChase), City of Detroit and turn-around advocacy. It is past time now to manifest the needed change in our Caribbean society.

This corresponds to the 5-L’s approach that we have previously defined:

Look
Listen
Learn
Lend-a-hand
Lead

Let’s get busy …

The JPMorganChase tenure … is now over! (The same as the Detroit tenure is over; goodbye and good luck to them).

The Go Lean book doubles-down on lessons-learned from the other communities, past and present. The book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. Many of these strategies-tactics-implementations were conceived based on lessons-learned from the other observed stakeholders.

We have looked, listened, learned, lend-a-hand in Detroit and at JPMorganChase; now we are ready to go back to the Caribbean … and lead. This is the approach for us to make our own homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like … Detroit … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/
communities like … .

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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One Step Closer: e-Money Solutions

Posted on October 29, 2019 in Economics, Government, Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Old: A penny saved … is a penny earned!
New: A penny saved … is a penny!

Don’t get it twisted! While the discipline of savings is a positive ethos, the end result of saving a penny is still just a penny. The goal must be to match the good ethos with some real financial resources:

A $Million saved, is a $Million earned
A $Billion saved, is a $Billion earned
A $Trillion saved, is a $Trillion earned

The assessment of the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean is that we need to foster the positive community ethos to save and invest – we need to be more Future Focused. At the same time, we also need to avail ourselves of the leverage of a regional Single Market economy for the 30 Caribbean member-states, rather than just one (1) little country by itself.

This commentary is advocating that the ethos that needs to be fostered is the adoption of Electronic Money schemes.

As related in a previous blog-commentary about Payment Cards…

…”there is now the opportunity to transform the industrial landscape of Caribbean communities; we can install controls so as to better manage our economy and industrial landscape. Among the many strategies and tactics discussed by this Go Lean movement, there is this one irresistible prospect of introducing electronic money (e-Money) or Payment Cards through out the region. So, instead of cash, industrial stakeholders will do most transactions … electronically.

This changes everything!

With an e-Money/Payment Cards deployment, there would be so many benefits; consider these possibilities:

Functional – Payroll and Government Benefits can be easily loaded; credit programs can also be added.

Universality – whether its e-Money or Payment Cards, all financial transactions can be executed.

Portability – e-Money can be used in Cyberspace and in the real world transactions (merchant POS, ATMs).

Security – Smartchips and PIN options can ensure against unauthorized use.

Resilience – card-to-card transactions can be conducted even with no online connection – think Block-chain.

Risk-aversion – The informal economy and Black Markets are mitigated, thereby fostering tax revenues.

Far-reaching – Benefits outside of the payment transaction; the scheme increases the money supply (M1), which increases available bank capital for community investments.

The Bahamas is now embarking on this journey …

… this is a great First Step. See the full story here:

Title: Island Pay Licensed to Provide Electronic Money Solution in The Bahamas
NASSAU (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Island Pay, an electronic money mobile payment service provider has been granted a license by the Central Bank of The Bahamas. The Payment Service Provider license was issued after Island Pay met the qualifications of the Regulations and Guidelines of the Central Bank’s mandatory requirements set out in the “Payment Instruments (Oversight) Regulations, 2017” that came into force on July 21^th, 2017.

Island Pay has been granted the first license under these new Regulations.

Frank Svatousek, Island Pay CEO said, “the Central Bank regulates domestic payment service providers including retail banks, credit unions and money transmission businesses, but saw the need to establish a new class of provider, the payments institution. In a recent paper titled Digital Currency – Extending the Payments System Modernisation Initiative the Central Bank recognized that the shrinking footprint of the retail banks coupled with the increased shift in payments towards electronic modes necessitated regulatory review and the creation of the Payment Service Provider.”

“Among the benefits of this new class of service provider,” Mr. Svatousek said, “is that our Bahamian customers will have cost effective and easy to use bill payment, person to person transfers, mobile top-up and merchant solutions. As a tokenized service, it is as secure as existing mobile payment services and all of our customers’ data is securely held in The Bahamas. The smartphone application, available for Android and iOS, allows users to manage the service with security and control from any island in The Bahamas.”

About Island Pay
Island Pay was founded in 2016. The company recognizes the strong business case for mobile electronic money providers seeking to re-do the way consumers interact with payments, authentication and identity, especially in underserved areas of the globe. Before Island Pay, management co-founded Carta Worldwide and Mint Technology. More information can be found on the Island Pay website.

For further Information contact:

Frank Svatousek, CEO
Island Pay
media@islandpay.com

Source: Ltd posted October 9, 2018; retrieved October 28, 2019 from: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/10/09/1618817/0/en/Island-Pay-Licensed-to-Provide-Electronic-Money-Solution-in-The-Bahamas.html

————–

VIDEO – Introducing the Island Pay Digital Wallet – https://youtu.be/NHP7tzTEW4M

Island Pay
Posted May 27, 2019 – Island Pay is the first Payment Service Provider licensed by the Central Bank of the Bahamas. The Island Pay Digital Wallet will allow users to load and withdraw cash at Island Pay locations, transfer money between friends, pay bills and purchase mobile minutes for friends at home and abroad. Island Pay Customers will be able pay in-store and online at participating merchants.

Category: People & Blogs

This First Step – regulatory framework – is just One Step closer to the vision of a regional e-Money currency for the full Caribbean. Yes, we can …

Conceive, Believe, Achieve
We have conceived this e-Money plan, and now we see the regulatory framework being put in place. This was the intent of the Go Lean book, to serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the aligning Caribbean Central Bank (CCB), the issuer of Caribbean Dollar (C$). This Go Lean/CU/CCB roadmap depicts e-Money and Payment Cards as a hallmark of technocratic efficiency, with the agility to manage this deployment. This will affect all aspects of Caribbean society – economics, security and governance.

This reality of e-Money fits in with the quest of the Go Lean roadmap, to optimize all these societal engines. Notice how that aforementioned previous Go Lean blog-commentary identified vital areas in society that would be affected:

e-Government – The CU is prescribed as the regional administrator for ICT for the Single Market of 30 states and 42-million people. While the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) will manage the region’s M1, they will embrace the e-Government mandate, calling for card-based, electronic payment options for all federal transactions and encouraging this mode for state/municipal/private facilitations as well. This means that the Caribbean dollar (C$) will be mostly cashless, an accounting currency much like the first years of the Euro. The CCB will settle all C$ electronic transactions (MasterCard-Visa style or ACH style) and charge interchange/clearance fees. – This scheme is fully defined on Page 198.
Cruise line passengers using smart-chips – The cruise industry needs the Caribbean more than the Caribbean needs the industry. But the cruise lines have embedded rules/regulations designed to maximize their revenues at the expense of the port-side establishments. The CU solution is to deploy a scheme for smartcards (or smart-phone applications) that function on the ships and at the port cities. This scheme will also employ NFC technology – see Appendix VIDEO below; (Near Field Communications; defined fully at Page 193 – so as to glean the additional security benefits of shielding private financial data of the guest and passengers. [This scheme will incentivize more spending among cruise line passengers.]
Electronic Commerce
This holds the promise of “leveling the playing field” so that small merchants can compete against larger merchants. To facilitate e-Commerce, purchased merchandise must get to their destinations as efficiently as possible. The CU’s implementation of the Caribbean Postal Union allows for better logistics for package delivery. – Defined fully on Page 201.
Internet Marketplace / Social Media – The CU‘s web portal, www.myCaribbean.gov, will grant free access, email, IM, and profile pages for CU stakeholders, even normalizing communications thru social media sites. This will facilitate internet commerce activities in the region, as the CU will have hot data on profiles, habits and previous activities, thereby creating opportunities for measured marketing. – Defined fully on Page 198.
Government Benefits / Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) – This sub-system allows State welfare departments to issue benefits via magnetically encoded payment cards, used in the United States and the United Kingdom. Common benefits provided (in the United States) via EBT are typically of two general categories: food and cash benefits. – Defined fully on Page 353.
Unemployment Benefits – The CU‘s mandate for e-Delivery and e-Payment will make the unemployment benefits process more effective and more efficient. Claimants will be able to apply online or on the phone, and payments will be disbursed to debit/payment cards, as opposed to paper checks. (Payments will be in Caribbean dollars, even in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands)- Defined fully on Page 89.
Remittance Solutions for Diaspora – By pursuing the e-Government / e-Payment strategy, the Caribbean Diaspora will be able to remit transfers back home by just loading values onto C$ payment cards [for free]. This simplified system will minimize transfer fees and furnish [Foreign Currency] (Fx) controls. – Defined fully on Page 154.

Having these many instances of electronic money solutions means that there must be a technocratic settlement / clearing entity. Enter the Central Bank of the Bahamas for the Bahamian offering. But for a regional deployment, Go Lean roadmap, we would need a regional Central Bank, enter the CCB.

Within its 370-pages, the Go Lean book provides details of the community ethos to adopt, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies that are necessary to execute in order to deliver e-Money solutions to the Caribbean region. The book re-affirms the mantra that Internet & Communication Technologies (ICT) can be used as a great equalizer so that small nation-states can compete against large nation-states.

Update
Now a 2nd player – Kanoo – has entered the Bahamas Market – see samples (photos) of their Mobile App here:

————–

The points of effective, technocratic e-Money stewardship were further elaborated upon in many previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17515	Changing the Culture & Currency of Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16836	Crypto-currency: Here comes ‘Trouble’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15923	Industrial Reboot – Payment Cards 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248	Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Transforming Money Countrywide – The Model of India
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Money
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa, Time for Local Settlement
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210	Cruise Ship Commerce – Getting Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	RBC EZPay – Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074	MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin virtual currency needs regulatory framework to change image
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook plans to provide Fintech – Mobile payment services

One Step closer, is good progress, and is better than going in the wrong direction. An e-Money transformation will transform the economic landscape for the Caribbean region. This is good; our region needs a reboot!

In general, rebooting the region’s economics is not a new subject for this Go Lean movement; both the book and previous blog-commentaries have stressed rebooting. While every societal engine needs to be rebooted – including security and governance – all changes will stem from our economic initiatives. This was related in the opening of the Go Lean book as follows (Page 3):

The CU Trade Federation is a technocracy, empowered to reboot the economic engines of the member-states, by fostering new industries (new “purse”) across the entire region and deploying solutions to better exploit the opportunities of the global trade market.

Deploying e-Money solutions will be heavy-lifting; but it is worth all the hard work. Let’s lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap to reboot our economic-fiscal-monetary engines. Let’s build on this First Step; one country down, 29 more to go. (See the Appendix below, entitled “Island Pay Launches its first Caribbean Mobile Payment Solution in The Bahamas using Samsung technology”). This is how we can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimize the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines ; where there is economic successes, “bad actors” always emerge, so there must be a solution for predictive and reactive mitigations and interdictions.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these above engines. This include a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, including the independent administration of the Caribbean Central Bank.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix – Island Pay Launches its first Caribbean Mobile Payment Solution in The Bahamas using Samsung technology

NASSAU (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Island Pay, an electronic money mobile payment provider, will roll out the Contactless Companion Platform (CCP) – a digital cash service allowing consumers to load money onto cards, fobs and a range of wearable items. The new service will allow Bahamians and visitors alike to make contactless payments between themselves or with Island Pay merchants across the whole of the island archipelago. CCP is running on secure chip technology from Samsung Semiconductor, the software application platform is provided by Smartlink, a Swiss fintech specializing in mobile and alternative payment solutions.

Frank Svatousek, Island Pay CEO said, “By adding Smartlink to the Island Pay platform we bring immediate, critical benefits to our Bahamian customers including easy bill payment, mobile top-up and merchant solutions. The launch of the Island Pay cashless payment system, licensed by the Central Bank of The Bahamas, comes at a time when bricks and mortar banks are reducing their footprint allowing us to serve the under-banked as well as the un-banked.”

The Smartlink CCP solution brings contactless digital cash to everyone in all levels of society,” says Eric La Marca, CEO and founder of Smartlink. “With CCP in place, you can make contactless payments via any enabled device of your choice, whether it’s a dedicated smart card, wristband, key fob, or even your smart watch or ring. As long as it’s able to accommodate the secure chip technology from Samsung, there’s hardly any shape or size limit.”

Among the benefits of Island Pay Mr. Svatousek explained that, “It’s a tokenized service, making it as secure as existing mobile payments services. It gives parents the ability to safely transfer money to their children and ensure they can only spend it on what the parents want and with its Web-based or smartphone app interface, available for iOS and Android, it allows users to manage the service and deactivate the chip in the card, fob or wearable item if it is lost. We are thrilled to be working with Samsung and Smartlink as it brings together a powerful combination of security, control and utility for our consumers throughout The Bahamas.”

About Island Pay
Island Pay was founded in 2016. The company recognizes the strong business case for mobile electronic money providers seeking to re-do the way consumers interact with payments, authentication and identity, especially in underserved areas of the globe. Before Island Pay, management co-founded Carta Worldwide and Mint Technology. More information can be found on the Island Pay website.

About Smartlink SA
Smartlink SA, a fintech company based in Switzerland, is a pioneer in the payment industry. Smartlink offers an award-winning platform to banks and card issuers seeking a first-class mobile wallet application. Its innovation team has recently developed the disruptive Contactless Companion Platform which will be deployed worldwide, to facilitate cashless societies using Digital Cash. For more information, please visit www.smartlink.ch

For further Information contact:

Frank Svatousek, CEO
Island Pay
media@islandpay.com

Sébastien Piolat
Smartlink SA
sebastien.piolat@smartlink.ch

Source: Island Pay Ltd posted September 11, 2018; retrieved October 28, 2019 from: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/09/11/1568977/0/en/Island-Pay-Launches-its-first-Caribbean-Mobile-Payment-Solution-in-The-Bahamas-using-Samsung-technology.html

—————–

Appendix VIDEO – Island Pay discusses Samsung NFC technology – https://youtu.be/aBcBtcHE7Hs

Category: People & Blogs

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UPDATE: The Most Powerful Woman in the World

Posted on October 25, 2019 in Ethos, Government, Social

Update – Go Lean Commentary

There are many female political leaders; think Prime Ministers, Presidents and of course Monarchs, i.e. Queen Elizabeth II.

Who, among them, wields the most power? Neither!

[Introducing] ”The most powerful woman in the world: Christine Lagarde” – 60 Minutes October 20, 2019 story.

The correct answer is Christine Lagarde, the former Minister of Finance (2007–2011) for France, who then led the International Monetary Fund for 8 years (2011–2019) and who now will assume the role of President of the European Central Bank (ECB) starting November 1, 2019. See this related news article here:

Title – What to expect from ECB’s new President Christine Lagarde?
By: Giles Coghlan
On November the first Christine Lagarde will take over the Presidency of the European Central Bank. She inherits an ECB in 2019 in a very similar position to Mario Draghi had in 2011 which is a climate of global uncertainty and political instability. Draghi started his time at the ECB vowing to do ‘whatever it takes’. His last hurrah last month can be summarised as him being willing to stick the course for ‘as long as it takes’ in terms of using easier policy to support the economy. He also looked outside of the bank for Fiscal policy stimulus as a necessary future assistance.

So what will Lagarde do? Current expectations are that she will carry on where Draghi left off. Bloomberg reported that in terms of Governing Council politics she will have an ally with Germany’s nomination of Isabel Schnable. Schnable is an academic economist with a track record of defending monetary stimulus against attacks from fellow Germans. With her on the council Lagarde will have an ally making her job much easier in leading the ECB.

So, in a nutshell, expectations are for more of the same from Lagarde as we had from Draghi.

Source: Posted by Bloomberg.com October 25, 2019 from: https://www.forexlive.com/news/!/what-to-expect-from-ecbs-new-president-christina-lagarde-20191025

Christine Lagarde’s authority is not a vesting of political power; she has only been appointed to these roles, due to her core competence with monetary policies and controls, but yet she has exceeded the terms of all of those who appointed her.

Madame Lagarde wields economic power …

… this could be more impactful than anything political or military. The IMF holds a treasure chess of $1 Trillion and her new jobs as President of the ECB puts her in charge of the 2nd largest money supply in the world. See this depicted in the VIDEO here, based on the TV News Magazine 60 Minutes:

VIDEO – Christine Lagarde on the global economy: We are all in this together – https://cbsn.ws/35LGjmC

Published on October 20, 2019 – As she leaves her position as head of the International Monetary Fund to run the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde tells John Dickerson about the possible signs of a global recession.

Christine Lagarde has been discussed before in a Go Lean commentary. See this previous blog-commentary from January 17, 2019:

… the overt favoritism of economic bailouts toward White Westerners was exposed and commiserated. This reflects the need for reconciliation. For the Caribbean, considering our European history, presence and future, we need to participate in this reconciliation. See this article here addressing the flawed favoritism of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), (the intergovernmental financial institution composed of 189 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world”). It appears that the ‘International’ in the brand IMF has not been as global as they claimed.

… the lacerating verdict of the IMF’s top watchdog on the fund’s tangled political role in the eurozone debt crisis, the most damaging episode in the history of the Bretton Woods institutions.

It describes a “culture of complacency”, prone to “superficial and mechanistic” analysis, and traces a shocking breakdown in the governance of the IMF, leaving it unclear who is ultimately in charge of this extremely powerful organisation.

The report by the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) goes above the head of the managing director, Christine Lagarde. It answers solely to the board of executive directors, and those from Asia and Latin America are clearly incensed at the way European Union insiders used the fund to rescue their own rich currency union and banking system.

The European Central Bank has also been discussed in many Go Lean commentaries before. See this list of sample previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744	Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’ ECB and the Eurosystem to take care of the “Euro” currency; their roles and tasks to monitor-manage inflation and price stability.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858	ECB unveils 1 trillion Euro stimulus program This commentary reports on the Stimulus move by the European Central Bank (ECB) to mitigate falling aggregate demand in their regional economy. It explains that economic news from Europe is germane for Caribbean consideration as that region is our largest trading partner after North America; plus the Dutch and French Caribbean member-states are directly impacted. Lastly, the Go Lean roadmap is modeled after the structures of the EU and the ECB.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833	One currency, divergent economies Europe has the safety net of the economies-of-scale of 508 million people and a GDP of $15 Trillion in 28 member-states in the EU; (the Eurozone subset is 18 states, 333 million people and $13.1 Trillion GDP). The US has 50 states and 320 million people. Shocks and dips can therefore be absorbed and leveraged across the entire region. The EU is still the #1 economy in the world; the US is #2. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the establishment of the allied Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to manage the monetary affairs of this region. The book describes the breath-and-width of the CCB, modeled in many ways after the ECB.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360	How to Create Money from Thin Air The system of Central Bank Reserves and the commercial banks facilitating deposits and loans in a continuous cycle, allows money to be “created from thin air”. The Caribbean Central Bank is modeled after the European Union and the European Central Bank (ECB). The CCB leaders will be schooled in the arts and sciences of monetary affairs by the ECB.

A discussion of Christine Lagarde is more than just a discussion of monetary policy; no, it is also a consideration of “Women in Power”. As detailed in a previous blog-commentary by the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean, “there is no doubt that more and more women need to be engaged in societal leadership” – men have often ruled with disregard for the needs of women – so there should be more female participation in economic policy-making and optimization. For this, Christine Lagarde is a role model. That previous blog-commentary stated:

The Go Lean movement advocates for more women in position of authority and decision-making in the new Caribbean. Why is this necessary?

Simple: With 50% of the population, there is the need for 50% of the representation; (this is the target). …
Among the crises that the region contends with is human flight, the brain drain or abandonment of the highly educated citizenry. Why do they leave? For “push-and-pull” reasons!

“Push” refers to deficient conditions at home that makes people want to flee. “Pull” refers to better conditions abroad that appeals to Caribbean residents. They want that better life.

We want that better life right here in the Caribbean. We want skilled, empowered professional women to feel welcome and to be invited to execute their core-competence right here in our homeland. That previous blog-commentary continues:

Consider the example of Rwanda. … This country has endured a lot (Genocide in the 1990’s between Hutu and Tutsi tribes). Now, despite being a poorer African country, they have healed a lot of social issues. They now have many women in policy-making roles; and they have transformed their society and now feature a great turn-around story.

Change has come to the Caribbean. As the Go Lean roadmap depicts, there is the need to foster more collaboration and optimization in the region’s economic and governing eco-system. This must include all ready, willing and able-minded stakeholders, men or women.

Let’s get started! Let get more able-minded people in economic, fiscal and monetary governance. Let’s lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap and make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Unequal Justice: Student Loans Could Dictate Justice

Posted on September 30, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

Education is all the rage for elevating individuals in society … to be more prosperous, to earn more and have a better life. This is why we send children to school starting at Age 5; and encourage them to work hard and do their homework …

… and why we invest in Student Loans so that they can get a college education.

But there is Unequal Justice in this eco-system.

Quick: Do you see the injustice in this situation?

You get a $30,000 Student Loan to go to college … for 2 years … for an Associates Degree. Afterwards, you have no job, a worthless degree and $30,000 in debt. – See the narrative in the Appendix VIDEO.

That is an economic injustice – welcome to the dispositions of Millennials in America in 2019; (actually the last 20 years). But America is not the only community experiencing dysfunction and economic injustice due to Student Loans. We have a lot of dysfunctions in the Caribbean too. See the details here, as this issue of Student Loans in the economic fabric of society have been deliberated in previous blog-commentaries; see here:

Title #1: Student debt holds back many would-be home buyers – April 30, 2014

“Of the many factors holding back young home buyers … none looms larger than the recent explosion of college debt”.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the economic optimization in the region. If the target of the book is the Caribbean, why does this article about American student loans weigh so heavy in a consideration of Caribbean economics?

There are lessons to be learned here! Not just for student loans, but also regarding education policy. This issue is pivotal to the economics of the Caribbean region.

…

Classic economic policy promotes that education has a direct effect on a community’s economy and the standard-of-living, quantified as each increased-grade-level, raises GDP by 3 percent (Appendix C2 – Page 258). But, the Go Lean roadmap posits that this rule is not true for the Caribbean, because of the debilitating emigration rate, the brain drain in which our educated population flees for foreign shores, or worse, students that do not return after matriculating – despite using funding from their Caribbean homeland. These are all investments with no return. In short, the economy of the Caribbean can be impacted by the activity of this recent-student population, when they repatriate; but when they emigrate, they hurt the economy.

… education funding policies adversely affect major areas of the economy, in this case home-buying. The cause-and-effect paradigm is direct, within 5 to 10 years after graduation; a former student should be planning to buy a house. Apparently the [American] macro economy is dependent on this relationship. According to the foregoing [an embedded] article, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) identified student debt as a key factor in soft demand for home-buying this spring (2014).

————

Title #2: A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Student Loans As Investments – July 9, 2016

The Bahamas Education Loan Authority (ELA) is owed over $155 million in outstanding loan payments for its student loan scheme, with a default rate of 75 percent.

This Caribbean community should now be saying: “Give me my money!”

However, this commentary extends the criticism further: The money being demanded is the principal and maybe even some interest amounts due. But student loans are supposed to be investments in the young people of the community. This commentary trumpets the reality of Caribbean student loans as a fallacy: Where is the return on these investments?

This commentary asserts that those who advocate to remediate Caribbean economics needs to avoid a series of Economic Fallacies.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean have addressed Income Inequality and the contribution of Student Loans to this plight. It is our position here that the eco-system of Student Loans can be a “weather vane” of justice in society; one that reflects the direction of society and can possibly effect the direction.

Weather vane
A weather vane, wind vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the “direction of the wind“. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word “vane” comes from the Old English word “fana” meaning “flag”.

Although partly functional, weather vanes are generally decorative, often featuring the traditional cockerel design with letters indicating the points of the compass.

Student Loans can indicate the “direction of the winds” of society.

Loans are debt, paying for past activities for a government service that used to only be a marginal expense (and free in some countries). See this point from that previous Go Lean commentary:
It’s not the cost of the loan ([interest)] that’s the problem; it’s the principal – the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008. – Ripping Off Young America: The College – Loan Scandal By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stones Magazine; August 15, 2013. (Appendix IH of Go Lean book – Page 286).
Student Loans are investments, preparing for the future. Those who pursue higher education always enjoy a higher pay-rate than without. The prospects of this Return on Investment motivates people and incentivizes them to follow prescribed courses of action; social justice and development advocacies can be urged. The member-states of the Caribbean region are urged to follow the model of the US Federal Perkins Loans – defined here:
.
The Bottom Line on Perkins Loans
A Federal Perkins Loan is a need-based student loan offered by the US Department of Education to assist American college students in funding their post-secondary education. Perkins Loans carry a fixed interest rate of 5% for the duration of the ten year repayment period. The Perkins Loan Program has a nine-month grace period, so that borrowers begin repayment in the tenth month upon graduating, falling below half-time status, or withdrawing from their college or university. Because the Perkins Loan is subsidized by the government, interest does not begin to accrue until the borrower begins to repay the loan.
As of the 2009-2010 academic year, the loan limits for undergraduates are $5,500 per year with a lifetime maximum loan of $27,500. For graduate students, the limit is $8,000 per year with a lifetime limit of $60,000 (including undergraduate loans).
Perkins Loans are eligible for Federal Loan Cancellation for teachers in designated low-income schools, as well as for teachers in designated teacher shortage areas such as math, science, and bilingual education. This cancellation also applies to Peace Corps Volunteers. Cancellation typically occurs on a graduating scale: 15% for year 1, 15% for year 2, 20% for year 3, 20% for year 4, 30% for year 5. These percentages are based on the original debt amount. Thus after 3 years of service, one would have 50% of their original debt cancelled.

Student Loans can also dictate justice, by the priority that society places on them and the incentives and mandates provisioned for participating students (deferments, cancellations and postponements). This is how Student Loans can dictate the “direction of the winds” of society.

This blog-commentary submission, entry 4-of-4, completes this series on Unequal Justice. The first 2 submissions traced bad history of tyrants here in our New World and how that tyranny imperiled whole populations. These last 2 submissions address matters of economics. The full series on Unequal Justice is cataloged here as follows:

Unequal Justice: Soft Tyrannicide to Eliminate Bottlenecks
Unequal Justice: Economic Crimes Against Tourists and Bullying
Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins
Unequal Justice: Student Loans Could Dictate Justice

In this series, reference is made to the fact that Bad Actors can always disrupt the peace and prosperity in society; sometimes the Bad Actor is a person, a group or an institution. So there is always the need to be On Guard to ensure justice is optimized in the region; for all people: young and old. Yes, the need for justice in the Caribbean societal engines transcends borders, politics, class and race. We need to make sure the “game is not rigged”, and we can abate and mitigate unequal economic structures.

The best counter-strategy for Income Inequality is a thriving Middle Class. The best way to get to the Middle Class is through educational empowerments; (see Appendix below). The subject of educational empowerments has been addressed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17992	What Went Wrong? Losing the Best; Nation-building with the Rest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16882	Exploring Medical School Opportunities … as Economic Engines
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13472	Future Focused – College, Caribbean Style
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9751	Where the Jobs Are – Teaching for Animation and Game Design
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669	Detroit makes Community College free … as part of their Turn-around
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6269	Education & Economics: Welcome Mr. President
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5482	Bad Model: For-Profit Education: Plenty of Profit; Little Education

We must be On Guard and ever vigilant in our battle against inequality and unequal justice.

There will always be villainy – Bad Actors…

… sometimes the villainy is just one character, a tyrant or a bully, sometimes its an organized criminal organization and sometimes still, its a broken eco-system. We must be prepared to abate, mitigate and remediate all tyranny.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Our quest is the full elevation of the economic, security and governing engines of our society. We can do better. It is conceivable, believable and achievable to elevate all 30 Caribbean communities – individually and collectively. We can succeed in making our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————

Appendix VIDEO – How college loans exploit students for profit | Sajay Samuel – https://youtu.be/YXWKuK-Qsu4

TED
“Once upon a time in America,” says professor Sajay Samuel, “going to college did not mean graduating with debt.” Today, higher education has become a consumer product — costs have skyrocketed, saddling students with a combined debt of over $1 trillion, while universities and loan companies make massive profits. Samuel proposes a radical solution: link tuition costs to a degree’s expected earnings, so that students can make informed decisions about their future, restore their love of learning and contribute to the world in a meaningful way.

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Category: Education

—————

Appendix – Education and Economic Growth

The relationship between economic growth and education has been one of the central threads of economic analysis. Both Adam Smith in the 18th century and Alfred Marshall in the 19th century, two important figures for the economics profession, addressed the question of how individual investments in “education” influence the wealth of nations. Throughout the 20th century, as Krueger and Lindahl (2001) point out in their survey of these issues, modern professional economists have been attempting to develop empirical estimates of the relationship between education and economic growth. Some of the most famous names in late 20th century economics made their reputations studying the question of individual returns to investment in education. Jacob Mincer (1974), Gary Becker (1964) and a long list of researchers inspired by their work have produced hundreds of books and papers.

Much of this literature is highly technical in the sense that it uses formal econometric models to test hypotheses using empirical data. The bottom line of this impressive work is that the economic evidence supports the view that both public and private returns to investment in education are positive—at both the individual and economy-wide levels. The vast technical literature on this subject can be subdivided into two general areas:

The micro-economic literature looks at the relationship between different ways of measuring a person’s educational achievement and what they earn. Most studies show consistent results for what can be called the private or personal payoff from education. For individuals this means that for every additional year of schooling they increase their earnings by about 10%. This is a very impressive rate of return.
The macro-economic literature examines the relationship between different measures of the aggregate level of educational attainment for a country as a whole and, in most cases, the standard measure of economic growth in terms of GDP. Once again, most studies find evidence of higher GDP growth in countries where the population has, on average, completed more years of schooling or attains higher scores on tests of cognitive achievement. However, as will be explained in somewhat greater detail below, given the diversity of national experiences, particularly over time, it is hard to settle on one figure for the rate of return at a social level.

(Based on established and historic Economic Theories – By Riel Miller, www.rielmiller.com; commissioned by Cisco Systems, Inc.)

Source: Go Lean…Caribbean Appendix C2 – Page 258

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Civil Rights, College, Model, Transform

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1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This treaty calls for the unification of the region into a single market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 member-states and 42 million people. The mission of the CU is to provide economic empowerment, homeland security and emergency management (disaster recovery). The CU is a neo-governmental entity, modeled after the European Union (EU). The EU attempted to codify a Constitution, though not ratified by the national legislatures of France and the Netherlands. So the EU Parliament accomplished the same objectives by amending the original treaties with the provisions from the proposed Constitution. The lesson is that the legal protections must be codified in the CU Treaty.
2	Articles of Confederation The 1789 US Constitution was preceded by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, an agreement among the 13founding states that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. Its drafting by the Continental Congress began in mid-1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification in late 1777. The formal ratification by all 13 states was completed in early 1781. Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Indian relations. Nevertheless, the weak government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key Nationalists. On March 4, 1789, the Articles were replaced with the new US Constitution. This new Constitution provided for a much stronger national government with a chief executive (the President), courts, and taxing powers.
3	Amendments – *Living Document* The US Constitution can be changed through the amendment process. Constitutional amendments are added to it, altering its effect. Changing the “fundamental law” is a two-part process: amendments are proposed then they must be ratified by the states. The Constitution has been amended 17 additional times (for a total of 27 amendments).
4	Bill of Rights – *Immediately Proposed* The first ten amendments, ratified by 3/4 of the states in 1791, are known as the Bill of Rights. These 10 Amendments, limitations to protect the natural rights of liberty/property, were proposed almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified (adopted by the First Congress in August 21, 1789), recognizing an important fact that the public (average man) may have to be gradually conditioned to acknowledge and accept the rights of other people in a progressive society.
5	Values -vs- Verbiage The US Constitution was written, followed by its amendments, to use broad language – a model for the CU – so that the principles primarily can be applied in statues for everyday laws. This indicates that constitutions should be strategic, depicting the values and vision of a society, while the legislative products (statues) should be tactical and specific.
6	US Court Interpretations ==> *Model for CU*
7	Ratifying – High Burden
8	Repeal and Secession
9	Slavery!
10	International Treaties